Buncha white guys mostly sit around talkin' and abusin' their cortexes in Josh Muggins' droll, genial rumination of the year he merrily failed his way out of a Minnesota college. Muggins restores to mindless male debauchery all the joy that more reflective memoirists have stripped from it, and in the process concocts a timeless, fizzy valentine to squandering one's youth on drugs and alcohol and unattainable women, and not regretting a minute of it. "A breathtaking feat of narcissism. It was crass, juvenile slugs like Muggins who put the me in the Me Decade." joshmuggins.com
The Fourteenth Congress for Analytical Psychology was held August 23-28, 1998 in the ancient city of Florence, Italy. The theme, "Destruction and Creation: Personal and Cultural Transformations," is especially appropriate to the Italian setting, with that nation’s history of destruction, both from nature and from human activity, and its tradition – especially in Florence – of creative individuals and institutions. The theme is fitting, also, to the context of Jungian psychology, with its emphasis on these and other pairs of opposites, with their integral role in psychic wholeness. Acknowledging, also, that destruction is indispensable to creation, some Jungians prefer the term "creative unconscious" to the traditional "collective unconscious."
The Jester and the Sages approaches the life and work of Mark Twain by placing him in conversation with three eminent philosophers of his time—Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx. Unprecedented in Twain scholarship, this interdisciplinary analysis by Forrest G. Robinson, Gabriel Noah Brahm Jr., and Catherine Carlstroem rescues the American genius from his role as funny-man by exploring how his reflections on religion, politics, philosophy, morality, and social issues overlap the philosophers’ developed thoughts on these subjects. Remarkably, they had much in common. During their lifetimes, Twain, Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx witnessed massive upheavals in Western constructions of religion, morality, history, political economy, and human nature. The foundations of reality had been shaken, and one did not need to be a philosopher—nor did one even need to read philosophy—to weigh in on what this all might mean. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary materials, the authors show that Twain was well attuned to debates of the time. Unlike his Continental contemporaries, however, he was not as systematic in developing his views. Brahm and Robinson’s chapter on Nietzsche and Twain reveals their subjects’ common defiance of the moral and religious truisms of their time. Both desired freedom, resented the constraints of Christian civilization, and saw punishing guilt as the disease of modern man. Pervasive moral evasion and bland conformity were the principal end result, they believed. In addition to a continuing focus on guilt, Robinson discovers in his chapter on Freud and Twain that the two men shared a lifelong fascination with the mysteries of the human mind. From the formative influence of childhood and repression, to dreams and the unconscious, the mind could free people or keep them in perpetual chains. The realm of the unconscious was of special interest to both men as it pertained to the creation of art. In the final chapter, Carlstroem and Robinson explain that, despite significant differences in their views of human nature, history, and progress, Twain and Marx were both profoundly disturbed by economic and social injustice in the world. Of particular concern was the gulf that industrial capitalism opened between the privileged elite property owners and the vast class of property-less workers. Moralists impatient with conventional morality, Twain and Marx wanted to free ordinary people from the illusions that enslaved them. Twain did not know the work's of Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx well, yet many of his thoughts cross those of his philosophical contemporaries. By focusing on the deeper aspects of Twain’s intellectual makeup, Robinson, Brahm, and Carlstroem supplement the traditional appreciation of the forces that drove Twain’s creativity and the dynamics of his humor.
By them we have been carried away out of our own land, as into a Babylonian captivity, and despoiled of all our precious possessions. Martin Luther, 1520 Their goal is our 'deracination,' which is 'detachment from one's background (as from homeland, customs, traditions).' Thus women and other Elemental creatures on this planet are rendered homeless, cut off from knowledge of our Race's customs and traditions. Mary Daly, 1984 What is this land, this world of which these two theologians are speaking? Why do the two statements above sound similar in the authors' longing for a true home, for our own land? And who is this them who carries us away and cuts us off? Could it be possible that Martin Luther and Mary Daly, different in almost every way, are saying something similar? Why do these key figures in the Christian theological tradition, who come from different times, places, and politics, engage in such a parallel task? How is this possible? This book examines a series of surprising parallels between two key reforming figures in the Christian theological tradition and suggests that the two are in fact engaged in the same task: political theology. Applying a new label to familiar theologians enables readers to see both of them as well as their reformations in a new light. The sixteenth-century Reformation and second wave feminism are viewed through the pioneering work of Luther and Daly here to further establish the political content and consequence of these theologians.
In an age when fathers are more important than ever, how do you embark on your journey to manhood and know how to steer clear of the dangers along the way? In Fathered by God, New York Times bestselling author John Eldredge reminds us that there's a path to masculinity and, best of all, there's a loving Father ready to help us follow it. In Fathered by God, Eldredge calls men back to a simple and reassuring truth: God is our Father, and he wants to show us what masculinity really means. Eldredge teaches us that there's a path leading to authentic manhood, cut by generation after generation of men. There are perils along the trail, even disasters--all the more reason to rely on the guidance of a Father who has gone before us. A boy has a lot to learn in his journey to becoming a man, and it takes the active intervention of father figures and the fellowship of other men to guide us along the way. Eldredge shares that in all of life's trials and triumphs, God is initiating boys and men through the stages of manhood. Through personal stories and practical guidance, Eldredge provides a map through the six stages of a man's journey and answers some of the most common questions about manhood that he's received over the years, including: How can I set a good example for my son? What does the Bible teach us about masculinity? How can I become the man that God designed me to be? Fathered by God maps out the path of manhood--not more rules, not another list of principles, not formulas, but a well-worn path that men have followed for centuries before us. Discover the truth about masculinity and become the man that God sees in you.
